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What percentage of lift in level flight is due to the Bernoulli effect?

No no - I can quite believe it has *some* effect - my question was 'how much'. At normal cruising speeds my intuitave feel is that it is a very minor partner - perhaps 80% angle of attack and 20% hump. Perhaps it takes the major part at slow speeds?  Although it might be difficult to calculate, it is surely easy to *measure* the two effects experimentally, you just have to waggle the two wing forms attached to a spring balance in a wind tunnel - a more sophisticated version of the Science Museum demonstration?

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Tags: flight, wings, Bernoulli, Wing, Angleofattack, Aerofoil.

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Jon-Richfield says:

Well, there are of course many options for experimentation. I am rather tempted by the idea of a spinning cykindrical fuselage with one wing up and one down, measuring how fast it spins. Or simpler, smoke passing over the wings, or schlierenphotography.

Not to mention underwater (or oil) experiments.

But I am not in a hurry to try any myself. If you get the chance, or go on study aerodynamics, we would love to hear what you turn up. (Really!)

Purely as an impression, I get the impression that high speed and high performance planes, angle of attack hopelessly dominates, and Bernoulli effects are reduced to streamlining effects.

What I read as a child was that Bernoulli effects contributed 5/6 of the lift, and angle of attack 1/5. That was in one of those "science for bright youngsters" books and I cannot say what it was based on. Also, it might have stemmed from pre WWII work, retailed uncritically 20 years later.

Caveat auditor!

Details, details.

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Tags: flight, wings, Bernoulli, Wing, Angleofattack, Aerofoil.

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posted on 2011-02-03 19:37:45 | Report abuse


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